In recent years, the substantial increases in costs of basic materials such as metals, metal alloys, plastics, cement, asphalt, rubbers and the like has encouraged development and use of light weight structural materials, reinforcing materials and of filler materials to reduce the amount and cost of the basic materials used and the weight of the finished materials. One of the suggested filler materials utilizes plastic fibers. The present invention which produces relatively long plastic microfilaments at an economical low price provides an improved plastic microfilament material for use as a filler and reinforcing material.
The known methods of making plastic filaments and fibers suffer from the disadvantages of requiring the use of relatively large amounts of energy to manufacture a given amount of filaments or fibers and/or requiring large capital investments in filament or fiber drawing apparatus.
The known methods of producing plastic filaments and fibers also suffer the disadvantage of relatively low production rates.
The known methods of producing plastic filaments and fibers are also believed to suffer the disadvantage of not being able to produce filaments and fibers of relatively small uniform diameters and uniform lengths at economical costs.
The process and apparatus of the present invention are believed to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art processes and are capable of producing microfilaments of uniform diameter and relatively uniform length of controlled and predictable physical and chemical characteristics, quality and strength at economical low costs.